“Keep to books, and don’t criticise our lives,” said Camille, glancing at him imperiously.

The dinner ceased to be gay.  Claude Vignon’s sarcasm had made the two women pensive.  Calyste was conscious of pain in the midst of the happiness he found in looking at Beatrix.  Conti looked into the eyes of the marquise to guess her thoughts.  When dinner was over Mademoiselle des Touches took Calyste’s arm, gave the other two men to the marquise, and let them pass before her, that she might be alone with the young Breton for a moment.

“My dear Calyste,” she said, “you are acting in a manner that embarrasses the marquise; she may be delighted with your admiration, but she cannot accept it.  Pray control yourself.”

“She was hard to me, she will never care for me,” said Calyste, “and if she does not I shall die.”

“Die! you!  My dear Calyste, you are a child.  Would you have died for me?”

“You have made yourself my friend,” he answered.

After the talk that follows coffee, Vignon asked Conti to sing something.  Mademoiselle des Touches sat down to the piano.  Together she and Gennaro sang the Dunque il mio bene tu mia sarai, the last duet of Zingarelli’s “Romeo e Giulietta,” one of the most pathetic pages of modern music.  The passage Di tanti palpiti expresses love in all its grandeur.  Calyste, sitting in the same arm-chair in which Felicite had told him the history of the marquise, listened in rapt devotion.  Beatrix and Vignon were on either side of the piano.  Conti’s sublime voice knew well how to blend with that of Felicite.  Both had often sung this piece; they knew its resources, and they put their whole marvellous gift into bringing them out.  The music was at this moment what its creator intended, a poem of divine melancholy, the farewell of two swans to life.  When it was over, all present were under the influence of feelings such as cannot express themselves by vulgar applause.

“Ah! music is the first of arts!” exclaimed the marquise.

“Camille thinks youth and beauty the first of poesies,” said Claude Vignon.

Mademoiselle des Touches looked at Claude with vague uneasiness.  Beatrix, not seeing Calyste, turned her head as if to know what effect the music had produced upon him, less by way of interest in him than for the gratification of Conti; she saw a white face bathed in tears.  At the sight, and as if some sudden pain had seized her, she turned back quickly and looked at Gennaro.  Not only had Music arisen before the eyes of Calyste, touching him with her divine wand until he stood in presence of Creation from which she rent the veil, but he was dumfounded by Conti’s genius.  In spite of what Camille had told him of the musician’s character, he now believed in the beauty of the soul, in the heart that expressed such love.  How could he, Calyste, rival such as an artist?  What woman could ever cease to adore such genius?  That voice entered the soul like another soul.  The poor lad was overwhelmed by poesy, and his own despair.  He felt himself of no account.  This ingenuous admission of his nothingness could be read upon his face mingled with his admiration.  He did not observe the gesture with which Beatrix, attracted to Calyste by the contagion of a true feeling, called Felicite’s attention to him.